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Exsilivm
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It added an explicit epiclesis. However, the epiclesis that now appears is not necessarilly ancient.
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Melchior_1
Guest
*“The 7th prayer [of the new rite for Good Friday] bears the title: ‘For the Unity of Christians’ (not ‘of the Church’, which was always one.) No longer used is the pariah ‘heretics’ and ‘schismatics’ but ‘all brethren who believe in Christ…’
Scholars think to shed light on biblical and liturgical sources from which the new texts are derived or inspired, which the Study Groups of the “Council” accomplished by using a chisel. And let’s say that often the work proceeded ‘with fear and trembling’ by sacrificing terms and concepts so dear, and now part of the long family tradition. How not to regret that ‘Mother Church- Holy, Catholic and Apostolic - deigned to revoke’ the seventh prayer? And yet it is the love of souls and the desire to help in any way the road to union of the separated brethren, by removing every stone that could even remotely constitute an obstacle or difficulty, that has driven the Church to make even these painful sacrifices."*
If people are going to slam the guy, at least quote him properly. But we can’t let that get in the way of good soundbite!
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EddyDRR
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I don’t see how that differs in concept from the paraphrase.
The message remains: take away Catholicity for unity.
Since basically no one would hear those prayers but a Catholic, what’s the need?
I’m reading “Be traditional, but not confrontational, but confront without being traditional.”
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MarkThompson
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Tridentinum
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Moon was partially correct. The perfect expression of active participation is receiving Holy Communion in a state of grace. Following along with the priest is second priority.
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James224
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I’m very traditional but not a Traditionalist, per se. I think Vatican II was fine, however, after every council the interpretations always seem to lead to a mixed bag of good and bad. To judge a council, I think a good amount of time has to go by in order to root out the bad interpretations and promote the good ones. The good ones I would include lay involvement or promotion of scripture study and evangelization. It’s not that you couldn’t do it before but after the council it was promoted more freely. The bad ones would include going to extremes in changing the Mass and suppressing the old Mass. Also, in my opinion only, was changing the ways of the different orders of nuns and priests. I don’t know what all may have been changed in their goals, etc but in the attitudes and dress. I became an altar boy in 1963 and the Old Mass was still in force at my parish for a couple more years and I noticed the change in attitudes when things changed. To me, everything became more laid back and it seemed everyone wanted to just “Wing it” when it came to the Mass. It’s still that way. Recently, I was asked to be an altar boy again at the Latin Mass and it was wonderful to be a part of discipline and more precision in how things are done. I have to be careful not to favor the old ways too much because I am naturally more traditional. I always have been. I love history and many old ways of doing things. I’m inspired by tradition. Hopefully, one day, we will go back to a more traditional way of doing things. I love the old music at Mass but it’s not just nostalgia but inspirational. It’s of a different world. I’m rambling on so I’ll stop here.
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Thaelros
Guest
Hmmm… They essentially say the same thing.
"We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."
"Scholars think to shed light on biblical and liturgical sources from which the new texts are derived or inspired, which the Study Groups of the “Council” accomplished by using a chisel. And let’s say that often the work proceeded ‘with fear and trembling’ by sacrificing terms and concepts so dear, and now part of the long family tradition. How not to regret that ‘Mother Church- Holy, Catholic and Apostolic - deigned to revoke’ the seventh prayer? And still the love of souls and the desire to facilitate the path of union for separated brothers,** [by]***** removing a stone** that could constitute while far-away an obstacle or motive of discomfort, have led the Church also to these painful sacrifices."*
**
"We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."
"Scholars think to shed light on biblical and liturgical sources from which the new texts are derived or inspired, which the Study Groups of the “Council” accomplished by using a chisel. And let’s say that often the work proceeded ‘with fear and trembling’ by sacrificing terms and concepts so dear, and now part of the long family tradition. How not to regret that ‘Mother Church- Holy, Catholic and Apostolic - deigned to revoke’ the seventh prayer? And still the love of souls and the desire to facilitate the path of union for separated brothers,** [by]***** removing a stone** that could constitute while far-away an obstacle or motive of discomfort, have led the Church also to these painful sacrifices."*
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Oneofthewomen
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This was actually one of the most imprtant changes that happened because of VII, and it was a very good thing.
If you do a search of BrJREducation’s posts, you will find out all the ins & outs,
but suffice it to say, the way most orders were living in the US just prior to VII was in no way, shape or form how their founders had intended them to live.
The reforms called each order to go back to their roots, and bring the order back into compliance with their original charisms.
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TimothyH
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This is an extremely important point Leon. There have been some outstanding posts on this thread, and yours is one of them.moon, I mean this with complete respect and with a shared concern with you about disrespect for and casual attitudes about the Eucharist.
But in fact many of my devotional books that are quite old - long before the Novus Ordo - emphasis that Jesus is somebody who comes intimately, as a friend, in fact, but that of course given who he is we need to prepare ourselves diligently and be as aware as possible of the immense and holy gift he offers us in himself in the Eucharist.
I fear that many people (I hate to use this word, but “traditionalists”) can have a tendency to react against abuses in such a way that is also one-sided. Making God remote and forbidding (without any sense of his fatherly love) was something that was a real problem for some people before Vatican II (though it wasn’t the Church’s fault).
Both of these attitudes have their proper places…
Also, neither Vatican II or the Novus Ordo ever denied that the mass is a sacrifice. It refers to sacrifice in the prayers and always did. Many things people object to in the Novus Ordo are not actually in its books, but are abuses of it that were never allowed and still are not, as common as they may be.
Priests, deacons and theologians are taught that each of us has a view of Christ which can be loosely defined as either High Christology, Jesus as king and ruler, or Low Christology, the Jesus who is a friend and brother. Each of us carry our own view of Jesus and if we examined ourselves honestly, we would find that each of us probably falls on one side of the High/Low Christology fence more so than the other.
But one does not invalidate the other nor do they have to compete. In fact, one is inseperable from the other, and the absence of one makes the other a complete absurdity. Jesus is both God and Man, and the union of God and man is the very essence of Jesus. In Jesus, God cannot be seperated from Man. We cannot have Christ as the King of kings without Jesus the man, and Jesus becomes an ordinary man if he is not also the Second Person of the Trinity.
In Jesus, the vertical (God) exists perfectly with the horizontal (man). We see this represented in the cross which is the instrument of our redemption through Christ. The vertical beam of the Cross coexists perfectly with the horizontal beam of the cross, and not only do they coexist, but the two beams of the cross would be useless without each other. The vertical line from Earth to God coexists perfectly with the horizontal line from one Christan to another, and not only do they coexist, but each is useless without the other.
Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. l The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
Love of God (vertical) and love of neighbor (horizontal) are like each other. The vertical dimension is similar to the horizontal dimension, and Jesus told us many times that unless we love our neighbor, we have no love for him. John says it in a positive way, so beautifully throughout his first letter.
And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. (1 John 3:23)
It’s beatiful how John combines the horizonal beam of the cross by which we love each other with the vertical beam of the Cross by which we love God.
I don’t see where anyone can say that the Mass is one hundred percent about the sacrifice and how they can not leave room for love of neighbor, fellowship and communion with each other. Don’t we pray for each other in the penitential rite? Didn’t Jesus sacrifice his whole body and are we not all members of that inseperable body? How can we then say that the Mass has nothing to do with other Chrisitans and everything to do with the sacrifice.
Can we seperate Jesus teaching about loving God from loving our neighbor when the entire teaching of the Old Testament depens upon both? Can we seperate the cross into the horizontal and the vertical and prefer one over the other? Does it not then cease to be a cross and become nothing more than pieces of lumber like something that we would buy at the lumber store? The insistence on the vertical to the absolute exclusion of the horizontal seems to me to be the Catholic version of Evangelical “Jesus and me” Christian spirituality.
It amazes me that some would prefer one over the other, or even exclude one from the other.
-Tim-
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Leon_Bloy
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What about orders founded only decades before Vatican II? Surely they were still living their founders’ charisms…
Also, Vatican II never told religious orders to drop their habits.
Sadly, whatever V2 did or didn’t say, nobody can challenge the obvious evidence that most of the large and older religious orders - especially female ones - were catastrophically decimated in the years following the Council.
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TimothyH
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Catistrophically decimated? I thing that is a bit much.What about orders founded only decades before Vatican II? Surely they were still living their founders’ charisms…
Also, Vatican II never told religious orders to drop their habits.
Sadly, whatever V2 did or didn’t say, nobody can challenge the obvious evidence that most of the large and older religious orders - especially female ones - were catastrophically decimated in the years following the Council.
If you do read some of Brother JR’s posts, you will see that the first Vatican Council did much greater harm to the orders and took them far away from what their founders had envisioned. The Second Vatican Council put them back on the right track.
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melekali
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So based on your responses, are you part of the solution or the problem, would you say?
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Leon_Bloy
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I don’t really think my statement is exaggerated, and I am commenting only on what happened after Vatican II. I don’t blame the council itself, by the way. About Vatican I, I am not making a comparison between it and V2 - and it would be wise to investigate claims like that, in any case, right?
Here are some stats on women’s religious orders after Vatican II:
Between 1950 and 1966, the population of Catholic nuns in the U.S. rose by 23% (from 147,000 to 181,421). From 1966 to 1986, it went from 181,421 to 126,000. By 1990, the number was 103, 269 - a decline approaching half within just one generation - about 34 years. Today it is probably much worse. My source is “The Growth and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders of Women Worldwide” by Helen Ebaugh, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (March 1993).
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Melchior_1
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The last religious order to be founded was the Jesuits, they predate Vatican II by a century or three.
If religious were wearing habits and they originally didn’t, then the habits would be dropped.
It’s possible that:Sadly, whatever V2 did or didn’t say, nobody can challenge the obvious evidence that most of the large and older religious orders - especially female ones - were catastrophically decimated in the years following the Council.
- Due to the sexual revolution, people weren’t happy with the vow of celibacy.
- After several decades of living a certain way, some people wouldn’t be happy with going back to the original charism. They could have requested to leave, as the order going back to the founder would not resemble what they signed up for.
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Leon_Bloy
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Melchior! That is certainly not correct. There were many religious orders founded after the Jesuits, all the way into the 20th century.
Again, to make this clear, I am not blaming Vatican II.
I was challenging another poster’s suggestion that somehow the era of Vatican II had breathed new life into religious orders or something, or that dropping habits aligned with an era of new growth, etc. (I realize I am not quoting that poster’s actual words).
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Oneofthewomen
Guest
No, Melchior is correct. The last order founded was the Jesuits.
Everything else is either a congregation, institute, society, etc.
Please search Br. JREducation’s post about this, he has written a plethora of information regarding religious life.
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choliks
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IMHO, i’d rather pin the decline in vocations to the decimation of the family. Vocations always start with the family. As humanity became more self-centered, particularly in the west, eyes were diverted from God to the self. With that the value of the family and the environment conducive to nurturing vocations diminished. I see this first hand in my country here in the far east, where the western culture has slowly been embraced.
Looking at it from the bright side, I’ve read somewhere on this forum (I think it was Bro. JR’s post) that Blessed John Paul II inspired a lot of the younger generation to seriously consider and discern their vocations.
Even looking at the Vocations forum here in CAF, where a lot of young people are discerning and asking questions about their vocation, gives an impression of a very hopeful future for the Church.
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Leon_Bloy
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OK, let’s be technical.
Religious “orders” in the commonly used sense of the term (i.e. as “college” is used for “university” or “institute”).
Many if not most of the largest and most prominent (teaching, hospitals) of religious congregations/societies/institutes of women in this nation are among these that were founded in the past two centuries and suffered drastic declines in membership since the late 60s.
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Leon_Bloy
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I think there is definitely lots of hope for the Church. Communities of religious life in this country - certain ones - are growing. But I feel sad about the older ones that refuse to face the fact that certain decisions made in the 60s and 70s did not work out, and hence are facing a nearly complete drought of vocations. It would be sad for them to disappear - many of them were once great.IMHO, i’d rather pin the decline in vocations to the decimation of the family. Vocations always start with the family. As humanity became more self-centered, particularly in the west, eyes were diverted from God to the self. With that the value of the family and the environment conducive to nurturing vocations diminished. I see this first hand in my country here in the far east, where the western culture has slowly been embraced.
Looking at it from the bright side, I’ve read somewhere on this forum (I think it was Bro. JR’s post) that Blessed John Paul II inspired a lot of the younger generation to seriously consider and discern their vocations.
Even looking at the Vocations forum here in CAF, where a lot of young people are discerning and asking questions about their vocation, gives an impression of a very hopeful future for the Church.
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Melchior_1
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“The 1917 Code of Canon Law reserved the name “religious order” for institutes in which the vows were solemn, and used the term “religious congregation” or simply “congregation” for institutes with simple vows”
Even after the revision of Canon Law, the distinction was still made; which makes the Jesuits are the last religious order. They were the last to have solemn vows.
It has breathed new life, although not the life you were expecting. Some expect huge growth and huge numbers when “new life” gets mentioned, but what they should really look at is the benefits of going back to the original charisms of the founder (which can include not wearing habits). The primary benefit is regaining the identity and spirituality of the order. What good is a Franciscan who is not living in community and refuses to vow to love and serve the poor? What good is a Dominican who refuses to teach or preach?
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